June 4, 2011
The artist(s) behind Het Politieke Plaatje (‘the political picture’) got bored with the real posters political parties produce during election time, and decided to come up with their own versions.
Shown here are a crop of the Party for the Animals poster, and the Labour Party poster (slogan: everyone counts).
Link: Trendbeheer.
Tags: Labour Party, Party for the Animals, politics, posters
May 23, 2011
Today the members of the 12 provinces will be electing a new Senate (in Dutch, Eerste Kamer) in the Netherlands.
It could be make-or-break time for the current right-wing cabinet who stand to lose a majority. There are three scenarios, likely to be decided on a single vote. 1) The government keeps its outright majority and continues on its merry way. 2) The government loses its majority and needs to negotiate a deal with the SGP (fundamentalist Christians who believe things like women should not be allowed to hold jobs). 3) The Senate will have a left-wing majority, and Prime Minister Rutte will have to negotiate majorities on a case by case basis.
As the left is fairly divided, none of the scenarios will be very problematic for Rutte. He might even forgo an alliance with SGP, who could mistakenly demand too much power in return for what little they have to offer.
The outcome may in fact be beneficial to Rutte personally, whichever way it turns out. A feisty senate—a political body otherwise mostly known for its roll-over-and-play-dead mentality—is what he is going to get anyway, and now at least he gets to show off his political acumen. For somebody of his ‘tender age’ (44) that’s not a bad place to be.
The election results are expected to be made public on Wednesday, although according to Elsevier the press will have their predictions ready around 4:30 pm this afternoon.
(Photo by Petra de Boevere, some rights reserved)
May 21, 2011
Last Thursday a cartoon depicting an altar boy raped with a crucifix was stolen from the Limburgs Museum in Venlo, Limburg.
According to Nieuwsblad, the thief took the drawing and just walked out.
The cartoon was made by Peter van Straaten for Vrij Nederland magazine, and netted the artist the Inkspotprijs 2010 award for best political cartoon of that year. It was part of an exhibition on cartoons, and was to be shown in Utrecht in October.
Meanwhile Toby Sterling reports that a priest of the Roman Catholic Salesian order was discovered to have been a board member of the Martijn Foundation, which tries to promote child abuse [1]. The priest’s membership was known to his superiors, who did not think it a big deal. Predictably the Catholic Church claimed “the church utterly rejects pedophilia”. “Dutch Catholic Church spokesman Pieter Kohnen said Saturday that […] if Superior Claes did not act quickly to reform the Dutch Salesian order’s leadership, the matter would be referred to Rome.”
[1] I’d link to the Association’s website, but it portrays children in a sexualized context, which might get readers in trouble.
(Illustration: Vrij Nederland / Peter van Straaten)
Tags: Catholicism, child pornography, Martijn, politics, Venlo
May 9, 2011
A report by the Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) claims the Dutch government is the slowest in the world in processing freedom of information requests. FOI consultant Rob Vleugels pointed out to Binnenlands Bestuur that Dutch ministries typically only employ four civil servants each for dealing with the requests. In comparison, the UK employs at least 80 people per ministry for this task. The British, unlike the Dutch, also train their people for doing FOI work.
Journalist Brenno de Winter thinks the problems with the execution of the FOI law centre around an incompetent government when it comes to IT.
Recently I had to wait 56 days for three photocopies. I had asked to receive the copies digitally, but they were incapable of doing so.
The citizens now foot the bill for bad automation. For years I have tried to uncover the extent of the problem, but the government is actively sabotaging me. They send me bills despite the courts telling them that such things is illegal, they take much more time to respond than they are allowed to, they claim national security issues, and they sometimes even just refuse to respond.
The Freedom of information act is called WOB in Dutch (Wet Openbaarheid Bestuur), and making a WOB request is called wobbing.
(Photo by Dennis Macwilliam, some rights reserved)
Tags: freedom of information, journalism, politics, WOB
March 11, 2011
The downtown district of Amsterdam will start offering subsidies to ‘undesirable’ companies if they change their type of business. The district lists so called coffeeshops (marijuana parlours), currency exchanges, massage parlours, prostitutes, small supermarkets, and other businesses that draw tourists to the city as eligible for a subsidy.
The borough wants to kill all kinds of economic activities in order to increase the variety of economic activities. Don’t ask me, I just live here.
See also: Unesco pulls trigger on Amsterdam.
Link: Plein Plus. Photo by Wikimedia user Bachrach44 who placed it in the public domain.
Tags: Amsterdam, marijuana, politics, prostitution, War on Fun
February 18, 2011
The once very popular Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party has been losing a lot of ground particularly in provinces such as Limburg, to make a long story short. Interestingly, many prominent politicians such as Maxime Verhagen (right), currently Deputy Prime Minister (and first Dutch politician to Twitter) comes from Limburg, speaks dialect, especially as of late when asked to because it’s election time for the Dutch Senate.
Picture your favourite American or British band yelling ‘we love [fill in city or country of your choice]’ to woo the audience. And it works. In this case, Maxime loses points for not being able to fill in the blanks of a hugely popular song by Rowwen Hèze, Limburg’s number one ‘export’ who play American TexMex style music mainly in Limburgs dialect and have been around for some 20 years.
Presentator Twan Huys also from Limburg decided to see if Maxime wasn’t just ‘talking nonsense’ and made him switch to Maastricht dialect. At least he was able to fill that in. You could hear the sound of the students’ hearts strings twanging when ‘one of their own’ spoke their language.
The chorus of the song ‘Kwestie van Geduld’ (‘A Matter of Patience’) is in ‘standard’ Dutch on purpose.
” ‘t Is een kwestie van geduld,
rustig wachten op de dag,
dat heel Holland Limburgs lult,
dat heel Holland Limburgs lult.”
(’tis a matter of patience, waiting quietly for the day,
that all of Holland ‘yaps’ in Limburgs,
that all of Holland ‘yaps’ in Limburgs.)
The verb ‘lullen’ means ‘to bullshit’ or ‘talk nonsense’, but is much more neutral, so I went with ‘yapping’.
Holland is a large part of the Netherlands, South Holland and North Holland, a differentiation made by Limburgers to point out their cultural differences, especially their use of dialects in daily life instead of the ‘standard’ Dutch language.
No one give me a lesson on all of this, I’ve been hearing it for 12 years from my Limburg co-blogger.
(Link: limburger.nl)
Tags: language, Limburg, politics, Rowwen Hèze
January 28, 2011
The local government of Urk has banned all strippers from the fundamentalist Christian ex-island, RTL Nieuws reports. If a bar breaks the new law, it has to close shop temporarily.
Last year a bar hired a female stripper who went the full monty, which apparently prompted this bout of legislation. Urk is the town with the highest concentration of fishermen in the country. Until 1939 it was an island–Urkers still say ‘on Urk’ instead of ‘in Urk’, according to Wikipedia.
(Photo of American burlesque performer Lola Bel Aire by Michael Albov, some rights reserved)
Tags: bars, fishing, islands, politics, Protestantism, sex industry, Urk
January 22, 2011
Say you’ve been a FIFA footballer of the year twice and have made a name for yourself as a dedicated anti-racism activist, so much so that president Nelson Mandela himself awarded you South Africa’s Order of Good Hope, and Bono and Mother Teresa have started looking nervously over their shoulders—which is an impressive thing to make Mother Teresa do, since she’s been dead for a good while. What, then, would be your next move?
Ruud Gullit answered that question by becoming a lackey for one of the worst dictators on the planet, Howlin’ Mad Ramzan, or as the man prefers that people address him, ‘King Ramzan’. De Pers report that earlier this month Gullit signed a year and a half contract to become head coach of FC Terek Grozny, the personal football club of Moscow’s puppet ruler of unruly Chechenya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Kadyrov is not one to take criticism lightly. He is the son of former Chechen dictator Akhmad Kadyrov and has a reputation for violence. “The word opposition is unimaginable,” he once famously said. And he doesn’t just stick to words, as he has a reputation for killing everyone who opposes him. Unfortunately for the Chechen people, everybody on the long list of people who have claimed to have evidence of Kadyrov’s misdeeds have so far met with lethal ‘accidents’.
(Photo of Ruud Gullit by Hamedog, some rights reserved.)
Tags: dictators, FIFA, politics, Ruud Gullit
January 8, 2011
Since 2001 tax forms have had a checkbox that allowed two people living together to declare a ‘fiscal partnership’, a relationship just for tax purposes. It appears (I never looked it up before), that if you and somebody else declare a fiscal partnership you get certain tax breaks, such as mortgage interest deductions for the highest earner.
This year the law has changed. It is no longer enough to declare to the tax people that you and Bob are partners, you and Bob need to have some legal status to confirm this. A wedding certificate is good, as is a registered partnership (civil union) or a notarized ‘cohabitation agreement’. The latter is used for non-intimate relationships (think father-son) and sometimes for uncommon intimate relationships (think polyamorous). What also works is owning a house together or having children together. Couples who never got around to making it ‘official’ now have a decision to take.
Interestingly, married couples who are estranged may wish to explore the possibility of a divorce under the new tax regime, Elsevier reports. You see, this new fiscal partnership is obligatory. It is harder to get into, but you cannot opt out either. One reason for such a divorce could be if each partner owns a house, so that they both can get their own mortgage interest deductions.
Another way to become fiscal partners is to have a partner recognised by one’s pension fund.
The people that may be inconvenienced the most by this measure is those who refuse to divorce for religious reasons, even if they no longer live together—a situation called ‘separated from table and bed’ in Dutch, and legally recognized as such, just no longer by the tax people.
(Photo by Eunice Chang, some rights reserved)
Tags: civil unions, contract law, families, gay marriage, income tax, marriage, politics, taxes
December 12, 2010
What if it had been the Frisians who had suffered a holocaust in say, the United States of America? Journalist Joris Luyendijk pondered the possibility in a short alternate history in his book ‘Het zijn net mensen’ (They are almost like people).
The Frisians will have their own state, and what place could be more logical than the ancient home land? Despite protests from the Dutch the United Nations agree to the plan, and from the entire world people of Frisian descent flock towards the new state of Frisia, well sponsored by the Americans.
[…]
A peace process follows, and the Dutch get allotted Limburg, a small part of Zeeland and chunks of Noord Brabant. Those regions are not allowed to be called The Netherlands, the country is not allowed to have an army, and the borders are continuously guarded by Frisian troops.
Graphical design student Ruiter Janssen (Willem de Koning Academie) was inspired by this fragment to create the above info graphic—called The Frisian-Dutch Conflict—which was then published by NRC in February of this year.
Tags: Friesland, infographics, Israel, Palestine, politics
